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Pence in Cincy: 'Obamacare nightmare' to end

Vice President Mike Pence speaks during a "listening session" with small business owners at the Frame USA facility, Thursday, March 2, 2017, in Springdale, Ohio. Pence visited Ohio to discuss repealing Obamacare and other issues. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)(Photo: John Minchillo, AP)

SPRINGDALE, Ohio – Vowing the “Obamacare nightmare is about to be over,” Vice President Mike Pence visited a family-run framing business to push the Trump administration’s pledge to repeal and replace the health care law while ensuring the most vulnerable Americans are cared for.

Accompanied by Secretary Tom Price of the Department of Health and Human Services, the vice president spoke with local small-business leaders at Frame USA, the Springdale online frame company that proudly proclaims that all its products are made in the United States. There, Pence promised that the Trump administration will “lift the weight of Obamacare off American families and businesses.”

Pence and Price toured the plant on Northland Boulevard, and the vice president tried to build a frame. In Frame USA's cavernous packaging room, standing before about 100 invitees and the company’s workforce, Pence said, “Donald Trump is the best friend American small-business will ever have.”

He said the Affordable Care Act laid a heavy regulatory and financial burden on small businesses, and the Trump Administration is working on a plan to “replace it with something better” that is “built on a foundation of freedom and responsibility,” lines that the audience roundly applauded.

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Vice President Mike Pence visited a frame shop in Springdate to talk to small business owners about healthcare. It was a private event, but that didn't stop protesters from being outside.

The event was not open to the public, and neither Pence nor Price took questions from reporters about the day’s news shaking Washington: a news report that Attorney General Jefferson Sessions had not been truthful during confirmation hearings about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States.

Some protesters stood across Northland Boulevard from Frame USA. One sign read, “They are lying.”

The vice president’s trip to Springdale comes after a congressional recess that featured town halls filled with constituents demanding that Congress protect the ACA. In the wake of Trump’s speech Tuesday, the White House is dispatching its key players around the country to stoke enthusiasm in the president’s voter base.

At Frame USA, Pence reiterated the laundry list of must-haves that Trump outlined in his address to Congress Tuesday for a rewrite of health-care laws: expanded use of health savings accounts, greater state flexibility for Medicaid, permission for insurers to sell plans across state lines and retention of the popular provision to prevent insurers from refusing to sell policies to people who are already living with illness.

Frame USA is a 70-employee family-run business nearly 30 years old that is notable for a monthly companywide charitable-donation program. Dan Regenold, the company’s chief executive officer, has been a vocal Trump supporter in southwest Ohio. Pence flew to Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport from Washington Thursday morning, paid his visit and immediately returned to the capital.

Ed Bell of Kenwood, who said he had been invited to hear Pence speak Thursday, said if he could ask Pence a question, it would be: “How soon will Obamacare be repealed and replaced this year?”

“The longer we wait, the harder it gets to get rid of it,” Bell said.

In his speech, Pence mentioned that he talked Thursday morning with Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who has been wary at best over the talk about repealing Obamacare. More than 700,000 Ohio residents obtained health care under the ACA’s expansion of the Medicaid plan. More than one in four of those residents has been diagnosed with at least one chronic condition, most commonly high blood pressure or high cholesterol.

To the Frame USA audience, Health Secretary Price said: “The president is very animated about this issue, and we are to make sure that no one falls through the cracks.” And Pence pledged “the most vulnerable … are seen to and taken care of” in any reform plan. He said the Medicaid question would be addressed “in the best way that works for people in Ohio and each state.”